23 Waxtoria Avenue
by Nazrath
Summary: 6 ridiculously rich men, 1 exceedingly common woman, 1 completely extravagant and flamboyant boarding house and a university which accepts the best and the rich. Can Haruhi live with these "rich idiots" without succumbing to the plans of "someone in the shadows"? Hang hang on a sec...do the officials know that Haruhi's a girl? Chaos ahoy!


**A/N: Hey there folks! After a session of watching "Ouran High School Host Club", I had this idea play out and couldn't help but type it down. The fans and followers of my FMAB fic "To Be King", hold tight...I haven't forgotten you guys! The last chapter is under the process of writing and I will be definitely updating the fic in the upcoming fics.**

 **As far as this fic is concerned, the update schedule is going to be real slow (guess monthly) as I have my college entrance exams round the corner. So until I get the to reduce the update gap, I won't torture you with any dramatic cliffhangers.**

 **I haven't decided the pairing as of yet...do share if you have any ideas or have a particular pair preference. Just nothing yaoi or shonen ai, straight pairings only.**

 **Happy reading!**

 **~Nazrath**

* * *

 **23 WAXTORIA AVENUE**

 _Summary: Haruhi Fujioka is elated. She has been accepted into the prestigious Ouran University as a student of the Department of Law along with a complete scholarship—a point that is the biggest boon in her kitty. No longer would her father need to slog after hours in that seedy transvestite pub and could finally open the bakery he had always wanted._

 _But there's a little problem. Due to some strange mix-up, Haruhi did not get allotted to any boarding house. And when she finally reached campus a day before school started, she discovered all the dorms were full._

 _Well, there was one solution. Not that she liked it…_

 **Chapter 1: 23 WAXTORIA AVENUE**

"You've got to be _kidding_ me!"

Nineteen-year-old Haruhi Fujioka might not be vertically or physically gifted, but her intense brown eyes held a cold fury which could tame even a raging mad tiger. So quite naturally, the poor secretary looked as if she was considering on giving up her job.

"I'm so sorry, Miss Fujioka," the secretary said quickly, her hands shaking slightly as she tried to rummage through her papers. Trying to find a solution.

Any solution.

"This is indeed unprecedented; never once has our estate department committed such grave a mistake," she sputtered nervously as she typed into her computer. The "NO MATCH" message flashed ominously on her screen.

Haruhi ignored the woman as she began a mental search for a solution. She didn't have enough money to rent even a room, and her father was just a month old into the bakery business; it wouldn't be fair to ask him for money. And even if she got a job, it would be highly unlikely that she would get an advance payment this early.

Man, she _was_ in one big mess.

"Um…Miss Fujioka?" the secretary squeaked. "I think there _might_ be a way…"

Haruhi raised her eyebrows in reply.

"Waxtoria Avenue has a room empty in one of the share houses," the secretary said.

"But it is not covered under my scholarship. Besides, the fee is too high—I can't pay that!" Haruhi exclaimed.

"Don't worry…since it's or fault, we will pay the fees until we can accommodate you into the dorm. Will that be okay for you?

Haruhi mulled over the solution—well, she didn't have any choice at the moment. But she couldn't help but cringe mentally; Waxtoria Avenue was famous for being the area where the sons and daughters of the rich and wealthy _and_ the powerful families of Japan resided, certainly not the academically oriented college students she had expected.

But then again, free boarding? She couldn't say no to that.

And, she mused, the rules were supposedly relaxed for the Waxtoria Avenue residents. Meaning she could stay the entire night in the library and no one would bother her.

Everything had its merits.

"Okay, since there doesn't seem to be any other way, I'll take up the offer," Haruhi sighed finally.

The secretary looked relieved at her acceptance.

"Please wait a minute, Miss Fujioka. I'll get the paperwork ready."

*/*/

Waxtoria Avenue.

Well, in a way, Haruhi had to admit it wasn't as showy and ostentatious as she had imagined.

A four-lane boulevard bordered with sakura and nadeshiko trees separated the houses, twelve on each side. Each house was three-storied and sat amidst a huge garden, each decorated in a different manner. Though the basic layout was the same, Haruhi realised that the residents had personalised it according to their tastes.

" _Ouran University also has an affiliated junior high and high school so most of the residents of Waxtoria Avenue have been living here since the last six years. It's almost like their second home," the secretary had said when she gave Haruhi her room key and the allotment confirmation letter._

Expensive cars stood in the driveway, gleaming subtly in the afternoon September sun. Apart from her, there was no one around.

Well, who would be out during the afternoon in a University campus on vacation?

Haruhi checked the address.

 _23 Waxtoria Avenue_

 _Room 302_

It was the last house on to her left. Unlike the other houses, it was more sparsely decorated. The garden was more of a lawn, though it was well-tended. A portion of it was bordered by a cosmetic picket fence…a portion which looked like the photos of the Parisian sidewalk cafes she saw in magazines. The house was painted in white with red lines accenting the arches and the roofs.

Not showy. Not ostentatious like Number 7 which looked like the Haunted House exhibit her class had organised during the School Festival last summer.

Haruhi grinned. It was perfect.

She looked around. The house seemed empty.

Well, until she rang the bell, she couldn't be sure.

She pressed the brass button, slightly jumping at the loud sonorous sound echoing inside the building. After a minute or two, she heard hurried footsteps approach the door.

And open it.

"I'm so sorry Kyouya…I was in the bath…"

"MORON!"

The one who opened the door lowered the towel from his hair, looking full in the face of the visitor.

And Haruhi snapped her eyes shut, trying to banish the image of the bare torso of the blond that stood in front of her. Trying to ignore the fact that the guy was making her heart flutter.

"Oh! I am so sorry!" he squeaked and rapid fading footsteps alerted her to the fact that he had gone back in. Seconds later, he was back at the door, minus the towel and plus a t-shirt.

"I wasn't expecting anyone this afternoon. Are you here for someone?" he asked politely.

"Er… I am the new resident in here. Room number 302," Haruhi replied, feeling her cheeks grow a little hot.

The blond looked a little puzzled.

"Room number 302? But no one's lived there for _ages,_ " he said, finally taking in her trunk and her backpack.

"Umm...yeah, I wasn't initially allotted that room but there had been a mix-up…"

"AH! Now I understand! You must be the scholarship student Haruhi Fujioka! Please, come inside."

The blond moved aside to let Haruhi in. The interior was simple but Haruhi knew it was expensively so. But she was glad it didn't feel like a palace or something. Just more like a well-tended room of a five-star hotel.

 _Two seconds in Waxtoria Avenue and I am a snob already_ , she mused.

"Room 302 is on the topmost floor, second room to the right. You put the trunk in the store—the butler will get it up in your room by evening. I am Tamaki Suoh, by the way. Second year in Contemporary Music."

Haruhi bowed slightly.

"I am Haruhi Fujioka and I would be starting classes in the Department of Law," she said.

"Law, huh? Guess you would have Hikaru as your classmate," Tamaki replied. "You hungry? The cook left some pasta in the fridge."

Haruhi realised she hadn't eaten anything since the breakfast in the train.

"Guess I am. I will go and get changed first."

Tamaki nodded in agreement. "Alright, I will put it up in the oven for heating, then."

The staircase was wide and sweeping spiral with polished wooden balustrade and white marble steps. The walls were painted with cream pink, heavy burgundy drapes accenting beautifully at regular intervals. After climbing up the first flight, she could see the entire layout of the first floor.

It was huge.

The drawing room occupied most of the space, which contained a giant fireplace flanked with cosy armchairs, a formal sitting area decked with sofas and a coffee-table, a more informal corner littered with pouffes, bean-bags and squashy couches. At the back was the kitchen cum dining room were Tamaki was currently scurrying about. The kitchen looked more like a classy chef's paradise than a share house's modest affair while the dining table had a more relaxed feel about it. The round oak table with sturdy chairs gave a sense of permanence and homeliness to the room.

The first floor had five rooms opening out to a common corridor which had a carpeted floor and was bathed in the light of the ready-to-set sun. A growl from her belly made her hurry upstairs.

Room 301 belonged to Tamaki, that's what the name-plate proclaimed. The door next to it was currently unmarked but a piece of paper was stuck on, on which her name was hastily scrawled.

"Should get a nameplate, I guess," Haruhi muttered to herself.

She took out the key from her jeans' pocket and unlocked the door.

She gasped.

Her entire apartment back in downtown Tokyo would have fitted into the room. Floor-to-ceiling windows dominated the entire wall that overlooked the grounds, though currently covered with thick maroon curtains. Next to the windows was a sturdy, big study table with ample space for her laptop and books. Next to it was a book-case in which her course-books and prescribed reference books were already arranged. Opposite to the study area was a door which on opening revealed to lead to a…

"A freaking _closet_?!" Haruhi mentally exclaimed. She thought back to her trunk and her meagre number of clothes; her entire wardrobe would fit inside the shoe cupboard.

Another door led to the bathroom.

Which had one giant bathtub. With an assortment of bubble-bath of almost _all_ colours she could possibly imagine.

She immediately opened up the taps to fill the tub before dashing back into the room and grabbing her nightbag. No way she was waiting for her trunk to come up.

*/*/

Tamaki left the pasta and the shredded chicken in the oven, making sure he shifted the knob to "Keep Warm" so that the food doesn't end up getting overcooked. As he contemplated about reading a novel or perhaps watching some TV, he heard the front door open with a resounding _crash_.

"Can't they ever be _quiet_?" Tamaki muttered, though his lips perked up in a smile. They might annoy the hell out of people but it was impossible _not_ to smile at the Hiitachin twins.

"Hello boss! You're looking good," said Hikaru, marching straight into the kitchen and sniffing around the oven.

"Great, you've got food ready…I'm starving! What about you, Kaoru?"

"Even though I _am_ ravenous, I dare say the food's for us," Kaoru answered, raising a hand in greeting towards the blond. "It's highly unlikely Boss would've known we'd be arriving now."

Hikaru looked so crestfallen than Tamaki couldn't help but laugh.

"I've got to hand it to you, Kaoru—you're right. We have got a new housemate and he's up changing. But, don't worry…Cook's left the fridge practically full," Tamaki said as he finally chose a magazine from the assortment on the coffee table and flopped down on the armchair.

"Housemate?" Hikaru asked, surprised. "Who's rooming with us? I thought this was supposed to be _our_ house!"

"Apparently the estate department got things mixed up and the scholarship student ended up without a dorm—that's what the Ouran chat room was harping about at any rate. So I guess the campus must have only one empty room at the moment…so there," Tamaki explained.

He cringed as a pair of identical devilish grins spread across the twins' faces.

"A commoner?" Hikaru crowed.

"In our house?" Kaoru added.

"Man, this is going to be _fun_!" they chorused as they half-walked, half-ran up the steps.

Tamaki groaned. The twins' idea of fun was nowhere safe enough!

*/*/

Clad in a pair of baggy knee-length shorts and a loose t-shirt, Haruhi climbed down the stairs only to have her olfactory senses assaulted by something which her stomach appreciated with an approving growl. She spied the blond in the living room, seated on one of the armchairs as he read a magazine very attentively.

"Suoh-senpai…"

"Aah, Fujioka-kun," Tamaki nodded towards the kitchen. "The pasta is in the oven. I hope you like shredded chicken 'cause I've taken the liberty of warming it up as well."

Haruhi nodded enthusiastically.

"And it's Tamaki…Suoh-senpai sounds really odd," Tamaki added smiling as he returned to his perusal.

She plodded to the kitchen and took out the dish from the oven. The food smelled heavenly. She carried the tray to the dining table and proceeded to dig in.

She was chewing her last mouthful when the twins showed up.

"'Evening, commoner," one of them grinned as he sat down on her right while the other pulled out the chair from her left and straddled it facing her. Their identical amber eyes held mischief while the identical grins gave out a strange sense of foreboding.

"The mischievous duo of Ouran…meet Hikaru and Kaoru Hiitachin. Twins, this is Haruhi Fujioka," Tamaki said in a manner of introduction as he walked up to the group. "I guess Hikaru would be in Law too, right? In that case, you'd be classmates with Fujioka."

The twin on her left, the one straddling the chair with a grin a minuscule bit more devilish than the twin on the right gave a loud guffaw.

"Cool! Then I get the new toy for myself!" he said happily.

"You two aren't in the same class?" Haruhi asked, slightly surprised.

"Most people think twins are identical to the last molecule, but that's actually not the case," Kaoru explained. "I'm more into fashion designing while Hikaru, though he might come across as an arrogant snob—"

"Hey! I'm no more snob than you are!" Hikaru interjected indignantly.

"—he's actually more of a study-the-law-and-argue-to-hell type," Kaoru continued, plainly ignoring his twin. "We'd given it a lot of thought but then at the end, we decided it's the best if we do what we want to do. Forcing the other to study something which he doesn't want to…that was never the option."

Haruhi nodded. She understood his point completely.

"I agree," Haruhi said. "People might look identical but that doesn't mean they _are_ identical. Five of talking to you and I realised that Hikaru is the more reckless of the two while Kaoru is softer and more gentle. Only a moron would classify you two as peas in a pod. If I must say, you're hardly alike."

Her statement was greeted with a pin-drop silence. The twins and Tamaki wore similar looks of surprise on their faces.

"What?" Haruhi asked, taking in their slack expressions.

"You, Haruhi Fujioka," Tamaki began, wonder lacing his voice. "Are the first person _ever_ to say that about the twins."

"Seriously?" she said, confused. "I thought it was very obvious."

" _No_ one has ever been able to distinguish between and Hikaru and Kaoru…and you did that. In five minutes flat!" Tamaki exclaimed. Haruhi could see the stars dancing in his violet eyes.

"Boss," said Kaoru, his eyes gleaming. "I think I've found our favourite toy."

"Second that, Kao," Hikaru nodded.

For the first time, Haruhi saw a true happy smile grace the Hiitachin twins' faces.

*/*/

By evening, the other residents of the house arrived. A tall, bespectacled, black-haired boy named Kyouya Ootori—who was also Tamaki's best friend and a second year from the Business Management Department—and two third years Mitsukuni Haninozuka and Takashi Morinozuka from the Policy Drafting and International Relations Department.

"Call me Honey, everyone does that," said Mitsukuni Haninozuka, a blond boy who was shorter than Haruhi by at least a head. He sat on the living room sofa, eating a plate of assorted pastries. He looked more like a high-school freshman than a third year at a university.

"And Takashi prefers to be called Mori," he added, pointing to the tallest man in the room who was currently arranging the showpieces on the mantelpiece.

"Honey-senpai and Mori-senpai," Haruhi said, bowing slightly. "Thank you for having me here."

Honey waved away her deference and patted on the place next to him. Haruhi walked up to him and sat down.

"Tama-chan told me you are the scholarship student, Haru-chan," Honey said, offering her the pastries. Haruhi shook her head.

"Yeah…the estate department got in some sort of muddle regarding my allotment to the dorm so I have been given room here," Haruhi said.

"Which is quite strange, to say the very least," Kyouya added, adjusting his glasses. "The estate department has never made such a glaring error before. I wonder why this happened with you?"

"I guess there's a first time for everything," Honey said, dismissing Kyouya's misgivings with a wave of a strawberry-cream covered fork.

But Kyouya's words gave a rise to the already roiling misgivings Haruhi had throughout the day.

 _Why?_

*/*/

Since most of the share house residents arrived in the evening, the group decided to have an early dinner.

Haruhi couldn't help but drool at the sight of the food. She didn't mind living here as long as the food was this wonderful.

"Caesar salad, pan-fried chicken drizzled with honey, pot roast and rice…the Cook's brilliant," Tamaki and the twins gushed as they looked through the contents of the fridge and took out the boxes marked "Dinner".

"Let's heat them up, Tama-chan. I am hungry," Honey whined from the dining table.

Thankfully, Mori decided to step in. He quickly emptied the boxes into the microwave bowls to heat them up. Haruhi decided to make herself useful and opened the sideboard to search for cutlery.

"So Fujioka," said Kyouya, taking the plates from her arms and helping her to lay the table. "You're in the Law Department, right?"

Haruhi nodded. "I want to specialise in contracts and open up my own firm."

"Hmm…that's a good goal to have," Kyouya agreed. "Ouran has an enviable law library and the graduates have very good track records. You did good by getting the scholarship. Even among the famous, Ouran Law School is legendary."

The dinner was in no ways a quiet affair. Tamaki was hell-bent in getting Haruhi explain him the differences between "commoner's food" and the food they were eating, while Hikaru added the fact that "pot roast" hardly qualified as "classy".

"It's more of a homely kind of thing," Hikaru argued.

"Homely for the British, not for us," Kyouya said in his characteristic no-nonsense voice while Haruhi couldn't have cared less. As long as it tasted right, she didn't care from which corner of the world her dinner came from.

"Yeah…but Cook's British, isn't she?" Hikaru countered.

"Yeah, but Japanese commoners don't eat pot roast for dinner everyday, do they?" Tamaki asked.

Haruhi sighed. She had a feeling that this "commoner" thing would soon become a daily fixture for her.

*/*/

"We have a _hot spring_ in the _basement_?" Haruhi yelped.

"Oh yes, Haruhi. An artificial one…not very big but yes, we have. Every basement of Waxtoria Avenue has its own mini-hot spring," Tamaki said. "You'd be joining us, wouldn't you?"

Haruhi stared at him.

"Join you?"

"Yep."

"Are you serious, Tamaki-senpai?"

Tamaki cocked his head to a side, now genuinely confused.

"Having a bath together with us will seal our bonds of friendship, Haruhi! Don't be shy, we are friends!" Tamaki exclaimed, doing a pirouette to prove his exuberance.

The others stared at Tamaki before Hikaru broke out into a guffaw.

"Boss…are you seriously _that_ oblivious?" he chortled, wiping his eyes.

"Huh?!" Tamaki looked at him quizzically.

"I think Tamaki here in under a misconception. Though I dare say it's beyond my ability to comprehend the heights of his absurdity at the moment," Kyouya said, letting out a long-suffering sigh as he adjusted his glasses.

"Tama-chan, is it true you haven't figured it out yet?" Honey-senpai prompted.

"Either that or our beloved senpai is actually a closet pervert," Kaoru crowed.

"Guys, what are you talking about?" Tamaki asked, a bit frustrated now.

Meanwhile, Haruhi was growing redder by the second.

"Tamaki, is it true you haven't deduced the fact that Haruhi Fujioka is indeed female?" Kyouya said.

"Of course I know Haruhi's a girl…. _what_?!" Tamaki yelped, jumping almost three feet up in the air.

"Bonafide female, though that hardly matter," Haruhi said through gritted teeth as she stalked back upstairs.

"Boss…"

"…she thinks you're a pervert."

"How could it have happened?" Tamaki wailed as the others gathered their towels and made their way for the basement.

* * *

 **A/N: Expect the second chappie sometime around Christmas...nothing later than that!**


End file.
